Record spring for Italian tourism, at Easter sold out in Puglia and Liguria

Record spring for Italian tourism and sold out (or almost sold out) Easter. Puglia and Liguria are at the top, but in general the whole country is registering really strong growth. This emerges from the analysis of the booking data of Wonderful Italy, a leading company for the number of directly managed holiday homes according to which the number of stays booked in the destinations in the first month of spring increased by 72%. Some destinations in particular performed above the national average, such as: Puglia (+85%) Liguria (+84%), Campania and Emilia-Romagna (+80%). Sicily also did very well, especially the western part (+76%). “April has always been the first test to measure Italians’ desire for a holiday, because the days are finally getting longer, the weather is favorable and above all, as happens this year, the presence of holidays such as Easter, Liberation and 1 ° May allow weekends to be extended by one or two days” declared Michele Ridolfo, CEO and co-founder of Wonderful Italy, who continues “the increase in the number of stays compared to last year is adjusted for the data relating to the increase in homes we manage that it has practically doubled compared to 2022, so these are actual data ”.

The increase in stays also brings a substantial improvement to the occupancy rate of the houses, with positive effects not only for home owners, but also for the Municipalities due to the higher receipts of the tourist tax and obviously for all related industries that tourism generates. In Sicily, the employment rate in April increased from 29% to 35%. In Campania from 66% to 71%. On the lakes (Garda and Como) from 37% to 50%.

The average length of stays in April stands at 4.3 days: a figure in line with the period, already from the years prior to Covid. Ridolfo explains: “especially in spring, the preferred formula is the ‘long weekend’ which allows you to break away from the routine even more than once during the season, thanks also to the fact that, by choosing destinations in Italy, the incidence of travel costs is on the total cost of the holiday”.

The data for April are traditionally an anticipation of what will happen in the high season and in fact Wonderful Italy records a growing trend also for the coming months. For the month of May, a nationwide home occupancy rate of 35% is already recorded, while the projection for April 2022 for the month of May stopped at 27%. Looking further afield, we already have a 27% occupancy rate in June against 22% in 2022 and 23% in July, against 19% last year.